Danish Reactions to German Occupation: History and Historiography

In Danish Neutrality: A Study in the Foreign Policy of a Small State (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991), I identified and analysed certain ideas and attitudes behind Danish foreign policy in modern and contemporary history. Focusing on situations of crisis or war in the region, I detected two opposing tendencies in Danish reactions, namely towards engagement in and withdrawal from international conflict.
At one stage, I considered the idea of following up with a briefer work which would explore a similar duality of attitudes to foreign affairs to be found in some modern Danish fictional literature. Instead, I decided to narrow the historical focus, and examine Danish reactions to the country’s most traumatic experience in recent history: the five years of German occupation during the Second World War. There were two reasons for this choice. In a conversation with my son and his friend Morten A. Pedersen – both members of the small and exclusive group of Danish anthropologists with a PhD from King’s College, now known as the Cambridge Danes – Morten pointed out that there was a need for someone to get on top of the ongoing debate among historians and others about Danish conduct during the German occupation.